textfiles/politics/SPUNK/sp001298.txt

DRUGS - JUST SAY N!

We are living in a time when disillusioned punters are selling each 
other fake E to beat the recession. Who are the victims and who are 
the survivors in this latest stage of chemical warfare? If there 
weren't enough risks with drugs already, now you don't actually know 
what you're taking. The chances of finding an unadulterated E (pure 
MDMA) is like trying to locate the proverbial needle in a haystack. In 
recent years the drugs market has mushroomed (no pun intended), 
bringing with it the inevitable problems of supplying the larger 
demand. With more and more people wanting to buy, one large police 
bust is all it takes to create a drug-drought, resulting in cash-
hungry dealers and manufacturers  spreading them a little thinner by 
inserting or substituting other substances. It's easy and cheap to 
mess with a capsule. It's easier and cheaper to sell someone an 
aspirin. Pills have been sold as  Ecstasy containing caffeine, brick & 
chalk dust, lactose (milk sugar), and talcum powder mixed in amongst 
their diluted contents. Indoor fish tank oxygenating tablets, dog 
worming pills, and American Excedrin headache pills (which have a 
large E inscribed upon them) have also duped unsuspecting ravers. 15 
is a lot to pay when you don't know whether it's an E or a Lemsip that 
you're swallowing.

The sense of unity reminiscent of the revamped summer of love has been 
dissipated by the recession. Instead of joining hands, people are 
ripping each other off. Club-goers are forced to sell each other fake 
drugs in order to pay for their nights out. Ecstasy is not the love 
drug it once was...

The media and government seriously need to change their attitude. They 
delight in telling people that they're going to die from taking one 
tab of Ecstasy, whilst they should be recognising drug abuse in a more 
realistic manner. In this day and age, most people are aware that the 
lethal dose of cannabis is a 5 kilo block dropped on your head from 
the 23rd floor of a high-rise building, and does not lead to a reefer 
madness induced addiction to Heroin.

The "War on Drugs" campaign (as any conspiracy theorist will tell you) 
is obviously a total sham. Public announcements on TV which promote an 
anti-drugs stance are immediately followed by advertisments for drug 
companies. It is not in the government's economic interest or true 
political persuasion.

However, most of these agencies have been taken in by as much drug 
disinformation as they have generated themselves. Parents, Doctors, 
and school officials have been duped by a nationwide hoax perpetuated 
by copying and circulating letters falsely accredited to a police and 
health departments, warning of a new drug problem in the form of 
tattoos impregnated with LSD (sometimes laced with Strychnine).

Described as having blue stars, red pyramids, cartoon characters, 
clowns, and other brightly coloured motifs to entice unsuspecting 
young children, it is claimed that they are hazardous even to touch 
and could send a child on a "fatal trip". The reference to dependency 
clearly shows that the instigators of this hoax know nothing about the 
properties of LSD since the drug is not addictive.

Although no drug enforcement agency has ever seen a LSD transfer, 
these chain letters describe horrific side-effects and fatal trips 
that pose a constant threat to children. Like a virus they spread 
throughout schools, health authorities and the police, as soon as 
someone is duped by the false warning.

The alleged worldwide distribution of LSD stick-on tattoos has now 
been around for two decades, or more. Such psychedelic disinformation 
has existed ever since Dr Hofmann inadvertently discovered the drug, 
and Dr Tim Leary expoused on it's virtues. Hence, we have apocryphal 
horror stories appearing in the press from time to time. In stark 
reality however, drugged students don't stare at the sun until they go 
blind, and stoned babysitters don't put small infants trussed up like 
chickens into microwaves. In fact LSD doesn't necessarily deaden the 
senses or your sensibilities. You're more likely to feel sad for the 
chicken and become a vegetarian.

The origins of this hoax seem to have surfaced in Canada and have 
survived in much-xeroxed myth ever since. Scare letters and bogus 
posters seem to have continually survived official denials and 
debunking by the major press, resulting in it being firmly placed in 
the public's consensus along with other contemporary fairytales such 
as the Satanic Child Abuse Myth (or SCAM for short).

LSD - LBJ - FBI - CIA : lyric from the musical HAIR, 1968

The CIA waged a similar systematic assault on the human psyche 
experimenting with drugs, hypnosis and a host of other behaviour 
modification techniques in a bizarre series of tests on the 
unsuspecting public. These methods had enormous implications for the 
whole of society.

HASSAN I SABBAH

The first unintentional spiking of a drug could possibly be attributed 
to the discoverer of LSD-25, Dr Albert Hofmann on April 16, 1943 when 
he accidentally gave himself a large dose of the substance. The most 
fascinating thing about LSD was that such minute quantities had such a 
terrific effect. Dr Hofmann had gone off into another world after 
ingesting less than 1/000,000 of an ounce (250 micrograms). He had no 
way of knowing that because of LSD's potency, he had already taken 
several times what would later be termed an ordinary dose.

Scientists had known about the mind-altering qualities of drugs like 
Mescaline since the 19th century, but LSD was several thousand times 
more potent. Hashish had been around for millenia, but LSD was roughly 
a million times stronger (by weight). A suitcase could hold enough LSD 
to turn on every man, woman, and child in the United States. Having 
said that, the possibilities that the Yippies envisioned by their 
spiking of the water-supply in major cities could not be accomplished 
due to the sheer amount of dilution involved.

Inducing psychosis on unsuspecting people via exotic methods to take 
possession of their minds dates back to the ancient desire to control 
enemies through magickal spells and potions.

Mescaline tests held by SS doctors at Dachau were administered 
covertly by spiking the prisoner's drinks. The subjects had no idea 
that a drug was causing their extreme disorientation. Many must have 
feared that they had gone stark raving mad all on their own. All in 
the name of advancing science and helping their country gain advantage 
in war...

Dr Harris Isbell kept 7 men on LSD for 77 consecutive days. Such an 
experiment is chilling as it is astonishing - both to lovers and 
haters of LSD. Sometimes giving triple and quadruple doses to the 
subjects, who were nearly all black drug addicts. Isbell finally 
decided "In all probability, this behaviour is to be expected with 
patients of this type." These participants have long since scattered 
and no one apparently has measured the after effects of these extreme 
experiments on them.

LSD was not thought of as something that might enhance creativity or 
cause transcendental experiences. Those notions would not come along 
for years. They were testing a weapon; for their purposes, they might 
as well have been in a ballistics lab.

If a drug showed promise, they felt no qualms about trying it 
operationally before all the test results came in. In 1953 LSD was 
slipped to a speaker at a political rally, presumably to see if it 
would make a fool of him. Their insatiable need to try every 
possibility led them to test hundreds of other substances, including 
all the drugs that would later be called psychedelic. Their legacy of 
unorthodox warfare continued by using the sacred mushroom of Mexican 
Indians' religious ceremonies. Soon the legend of the Aztec holy 
communion was forgotten as these plunderers lost track of the age-old 
rites, thinking only of its use as a truth drug. The magic mushroom 
never became a good spy weapon. It made people behave strangely but no 
one could predict where their trips would take them. Agency officials 
craved certainty.

It is ironic that law-enforcement officers frequently violate the law 
themselves. The systematic use of LSD on "outsiders" who had no idea 
they had received the drug took place. These victims simply felt their 
moorings slip away in the midst of an ordinary day, for no apparent 
reason, and no one really knew how they would react. In retrospect, it 
seems bizarre that CIA officials, men responsible for the nation's 
intelligence and alertness were sneaking LSD into each other's coffee 
cups and thereby subjecting themselves to the unknown realm of 
experimental drugs.

Sometimes they occasionally lost an unwitting victim in a crowd - 
thereby sending a stranger off alone with a head full of bad acid. In 
a larger sense, all the test victims would become lost. As a matter of 
policy no records were kept, and those that did exist, were destroyed. 
Along with the CIA's experiments with sex, men were enticed with 
prostitutes. An unsuspecting john would think he had bought a night of 
pleasure, go back to a strange apartment, and wind up zonked.

The CIA also made extensive use of practical joke novelties such as 
stink bombs, itching and sneezing powders, and diarrhoea inducers. 
"Harrassment substances" like these and delivery systems that 
mechanically launched a foul-smelling object 100 yards, glass ampules 
that could be stepped on in a crowd to release practically anything 
that came to mind. Fine hypodermic needles were used to inject drugs 
through the cork in a wine bottle, or to place a concentrated form of 
marijuana in packs of cigarettes which would then be resealed.

Strangers were invited to parties where LSD would be sprayed from 
aerosol cans and drinks served with drug-coated swizzle sticks, but 
thankfully most of these plans never came to fruition. This approach 
turned the public perception of a deadly serious program into a kind 
of practical joke carried out badly by a bunch of bumblers operating 
on the edge of madness.

The illegal, irresponsible and downright dangerous prescriptions to 
unsuspecting guinea pigs still continues in most stratas of society, 
and can backfire in unexpected ways.

The influence of hallucinogenic drugs on The Beatles caused a marked 
change in their music and outlook. Although no strangers to illicit 
substances (they smoked dope in the toilets at Buckingham Palace 
before collecting, and then returning their MBEs on the 23/11/69) 
their first encounter with LSD was at a dinner party held by a dentist 
friend of George Harrison's. Unknown to the fab four, he had spiked 
their coffee with acid, then advised them not to leave. As he was 
basically a middle-class London swinger, they assumed he was about to 
suggest an orgy and left. By the time the drug took effect they were 
in a nightclub and became convinced, due to the multi-coloured 
lighting, that the place was on fire. Eventually they realised they 
had taken something - maybe opium, Lennon thought (having read about 
it) - and Harrison somehow managed to drive them home. One of the 
results was a picture drawn by Lennon of them in what seemed to be 
just like a submarine...a Yellow Submarine? (All you Discordians, 
please take note!)

Perhaps the best example of "spiking" emanates from Ken Kesey and the 
Merry Pranksters' Kool-Aid acid tests of the mid-sixties. Begun in 
August 1965, the tests continued until LSD was declared illegal on the 
6th of October 1966. By this time, it was estimated that ten thousand 
had ingested the drug in sugar lumps, punch, coffee or cookies. Part 
prank, part gesture, they were a natural culmination of their 
experiments. Acts of sheer inspiration and generosity, turning on the 
whole world through love, fun, and understanding.

The Merry Pranksters planned to perform "The Acid Test Graduation" on 
Halloween, 31/10/1966 at Winterland. This involved a "happening" where 
all the doors, walls, chairs, and water system would be impregnated 
with LSD. The following night it was scheduled that the entire 
Democratic Party of California would be attending a big rally at the 
very same venue and would get turned on, zonked out of their apples.

Eight thousand emphysematous fatback Senators, Assemblymen, National 
Committeemen, Congressmen, and the Governer himself would be wailing 
like Banshees, flopping around, gurgling and spitting and frying like 
a pile of insane pancakes. Unfortunately, they never managed to pull 
off this debacle, which would've made Jonestown look like a school 
picnic. If this sounds irresponsible, you might like to consider that 
the CIA at one time seriously proposed dosing an entire American 
subway with LSD, just as a little experiment mind you!

The only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon  -  An Old Yipster 
saying.

The Golden Rule (if any) about drug use (or misuse) must be that you 
are ultimately responsible for your own actions. Give very careful 
thought and consideration, no one wants a brain-damaged corpse on 
their conscience. Most people take drugs - whether it's a cup of tea, 
a joint, a glass of whisky or an aspirin.

There are many alternative ways to benefit your head and alter other's 
realities without recourse to chemical means. You don't have to risk 
your health, a large fine, or prison sentence to get high.

Anything that can be accomplished by chemical means can be 
accomplished by other means.
                                                - William S. Burroughs

Apart from the drug dealers who will run off with your money, or 
alternatively, substitute oregano, parsley, catnip, an Oxo cube, or 
camel shit for hash, there are those who are trying to readdress the 
balance without unethical involuntarily spiking. The CIA originally 
wanted LSD to be a control mechanism and it backfired. Instead, people 
used it as a catalyst to deprogram themselves from everyday culture 
and reprogram themselves into their own value system.

In New York on St Valentine's Day 1969, the Yippies mailed over 30,000 
freshly rolled marijuana joints to people picked randomly out of the 
phone book, with instructions provided on their use. The enclosed 
disarming manifesto stated "Hi! Happy Valentine's Day! In case you 
ever wondered what pot was like, here it is - go on try it!" The text 
continued with directions on how to smoke, etc, and ended with, "Oh, 
by the way, just holding this joint qualifies you for five years in 
prison in this state." (Which isn't as bad as some states which give 
forty years).

A group in Los Angeles placed over 2000 joints in library books and 
then advised kids to smoke a book during National Library Week.

More underhanded (or slightly easier) ways to dose people such as 
baking hash-cakes/biscuits, or using marijuana leaves instead of tea-
leaves have also been known to have been used from time to time.

In October 1968, Federal authorities were hunting an itinerant hippie 
who was scattering marijuana seeds on land throughout the Midwest. 
Sowing his seeds on abandoned farms, he posted a regular map showing 
the latest pot plantings to fellow smokers.

Planting drugs (aside from growing them) has also been a favourite 
occupation of both sides of the law. Even if it's as simple as 
grinding up an aspirin into a plastic bag, placing it in someone's 
pocket, and framing them.

Judge Pickle's clarion call to legalize dope may have already been 
taken to heart by West Midland's Drug Squad. DC Crump recently refused 
to prosecute a Stourbridge McDonalds when 5 pot plants (as in 
Marijuana pot plants!) were found growing in its window boxes. He said 
they'd been "planted". Obviously, they couldn't have just flown there. 
Could they?!?!?

Finally, should we conclude that all pranks involving drugs are 
dangerous? In fact, is electricity dangerous? Like everything else, 
the danger lies not so much in the drug itself as in how it is used...